If You’re a Musician, You May Nevertheless Have Something to Say About Other Things

February 5, 2015

If you’re a musician (or an exponent of any other art or craft), you may have long since reconciled yourself to the idea that nobody expects you to have anything worth saying about politics, current events, or other subjects of general interest. If you want to change that, you might consider moving to Catalonia. Today I was on Barcelona television for the fifth time in three years (the first two times being while I still lived in New York but was known to be involved with Catalan culture). I’ve also been interviewed on the whole of two radio programs and had a full-page interview in my (small-town) paper. Smaller societies are different from the vast United States expanse and gargantuan media culture that I grew up in. Small countries have great advantages for exchanging ideas.